NCAA Basketball: Top 5 former players who would’ve benefitted from new NIL rules

Mo Bamba: University of Texas

Current Instagram Follower Count: 765K

Current Twitter Follower Count: 37.3K

Mo Bamba doesn’t have half the following as the other players on this list, however, Bamba has something the others on this list don’t, an insanely popular song that was written about them. Mo Bamba, a song written by Bamba’s high school friend Sheck Wes, was written because Bamba asked Sheck Wes to put his name in a song.

The song was an international hit, in the United States, it peaked at 21 on the US Billboard Hot 100, while peaking at 80 on the UK Singles Chart. The song was released in June of 2017, and from the fall of 2018 through the winter of 2019, it was nearly impossible to go to a sporting event without hearing the song being played once.

In addition to the success it had on the top charts, it has also been played a total of 717,163,449 times on Spotify, to put that into perspective, the song on the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 for the week of July 3, 2021, “Butter” by BTS, has been played a total of 318,404,888 times on Spotify.

Nonetheless, I think you get the point, a song written about former Texas star Mo Bamba was insanely popular, and to a degree, it still is, and yet he wasn’t able to profit off the song at its peak because he wasn’t allowed to profit off of his name, image, and likeness.

Now, he wasn’t the artist who wrote the song, or the producer, or anything of that nature, but the song title was his name, and for that, he would’ve been in a position to make a TON of money, and he likely would’ve had a plethora of opportunities to have endorsement deals because of the song.

If it weren’t for the song, Bamba wouldn’t be anywhere near this list, but because an internationally famous song was written about a player who at the time was getting ready to play college basketball, he would’ve been able to make a ton of money.